1 October 2025 Articles

Congratulations, Laurens and Idzi!

Laurens Liesenborghs and Idzi Potters received prestigious awards for their outstanding contributions to their respective fields.

Laurens received the award surrounded by his ITM colleagues.

Congratulations, Laurens!

We are proud to announce that Laurens Liesenborghs has been awarded the 2025 Prize of the Flemish Scientific Foundation for Biomedical Sciences. This prestigious prize, presented in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, recognises young researchers for their outstanding scientific contributions.

Laurens is an internist and professor of emerging infectious diseases. Together with his team and Congolese partners, he investigates tropical pathogens with epidemic potential. His groundbreaking research on mpox, including the discovery of a new variant (Clade Ib) published in Nature Medicine, has shaped the global response to this disease.

Laurens at work during the 2022 mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Laurens Liesenborghs

Laurens is a physician, specialised in internal medicine with a keen interest in emerging infectious diseases.
He previously worked on a project related to Lassa fever for Doctors Without Borders and has translational research experience in bacteriology and virology.
Before joining ITM, he worked as a researcher at the Rega Institute for Medical Research at KU Leuven, focusing on developing treatments and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, while conducting clinical studies with hospitalised COVID-19 patients.
Since 2022 he is an assistant professor of Clinical Emerging Infectious Diseases at ITM and collaborates closely with ITM’s multidisciplinary Outbreak Research Team.

Want to hear more about Laurens' work?

Laurens stars in the first season of Transmission, our award-winning podcast series. Listen on your favourite podcast platform.

Listen to Transmission

Idzi Potters

Congratulations, Idzi!

We are equally proud to announce that Idzi Potters has won the 2026 ASM Scherago-Rubin Award for Clinical Microbiology! This prestigious award from the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) recognises outstanding scientists for their contributions to research, education, and leadership in microbiology.

Many postgraduate students fondly remember Idzi for his passionate and engaging teaching style.

Idzi Potters

Idzi Potters is a biomedical laboratory technologist with over 25 years of experience at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp.
He is an expert in the diagnosis of intestinal, tissue, blood, and ectoparasites.
Passionate about education, he teaches parasitology at ITM and the University of Antwerp.
He has contributed to international capacity building in Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Idzi co-authored the WHO Bench Aids for the Diagnosis of Intestinal Parasites and is the lead author of a chapter in the Manual of Clinical Microbiology. He also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology (ASM).